baby in action (sort of)

Advice for new mothers

1. Decide how many packets of chocolate biscuits you think you will need in the first month of your baby's life. Add on a zero to the end. Be prepared.

2. Breastfeeding can be difficult and all-consuming. Especially if you have a baby who is difficult and all-consuming. Whenever you think, 'but it CAN'T be food - you just ate!', it's food.

3. Rule number 1: Never wake a sleeping baby. Rule number 2: See Rule number 1.

4. People are keen to look after you and ask how you are when you are pregnant. No one will give a toss about you afterwards. Even if you did have major surgery. You are now only a machine to sustain your baby, and the sooner you get used to this, rather than insisting you are still a person in your own right with needs and feelings, the better.

5. Babies don't understand sarcasm. Case in point:

Deborah (on picking up a lip-smacking, about to cry Gretel, who is trying to ram her hand in her mouth... for her third feed in an hour): Poor baby, you must be STARVING

Gretel: (says nothing, stares straight ahead and feeds as though there will never be food again)

6. You will be able to do some things more often and easily than you thought, like updating your facebook page, browsing the net and reading books. In contrast, some things you took for granted before, like being able to shower AND dry your hair in the same day, will become Herculean tasks.

7. Have a bath every night. Even if it's only for ten minutes, you get to lock the door, feel human and like an adult. Plus it helps with the milk.

8. It's ok to feel regret, sadness and anger that you no longer have access to the life you had before. I was pretty keen on mine, as it turns out.

9. You may not have an immediate and overwhelming love-in with the baby. Truth be told, it is like being given a tiny, needy alien at first. With every day that passes, they become more human and comprehensible, but at first, there is no point of communication, other than the purely physical. Which, if you're used to reason, logic, emotion and WORDS, is tough. Depends on your style of course, but personally speaking, communicating primarily through one's breasts seems a strange idea to get used to.

10. Tell visitors in advance when to come and when to leave by. If they stay too long, tell them you have to sleep (this will work better if the baby is asleep).

11. Make sure your partner takes off as much time as possible. Two weeks paternity leave is laughable. You need more. Single mothers are clearly superhumans to be respected and feared.

12. Hang out with other people with new babies. They will talk to you about the boring baby minutiae that has become your life. It's not that you WANT to be dull... it's that you literally have nothing else to talk about because you haven't done, seen or experienced anything else.

13. Don't use cliches unless you really mean them. I'd feel better if other people said 'god, sometimes I really regret having a baby'...it doesn't make you a bad person and it doesn't mean you feel like that all the time. But I suspect there are a lot of people out there feeling that, but saying 'oh you forget everything and it's all worth it as soon as you see her/his precious little face'. It's hard. Why can't we just say it's hard?

14. Accept that you will have conversations about poo.

15. Just let it be what it is. You will constantly wonder if this is normal. Seems to me whatever it is almost always is.

Merry Christmas (courtesy of Riccardo)

Ten things I have learned since last Monday

1. Babies do smell nice, and not, as I have maintained for years, of melon.

2. I can type with my left hand.

3. When people say, 'you'll forget all the pain as soon as you see your beautiful baby', they are either lying or freaks.

4. Poo is not cute when it belongs to your own baby. It's still gross.

5. We have never really given the cat enough props for her self-cleaning abilities.

6. It is better if, when you are told you require emergency surgery, not to have that statement followed up with 'but you'll have to wait a short while, because someone else is in there having it right now, and she's having a haemorrhage'.

7. Babies are 100% feeling, 0% reason.

8. Major abdominal surgery, care of a newborn, and visiting hours which require your support network to disappear for 12 hour stretches, are not a happy combination.

9. Sleep is not overrated. As Joni once said, you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone...

10. My baby really IS the most beautiful and intelligent one that ever there was.

Gretel Rose

no news is no news

Well, here we are at the weekend and still nothing to report. Baby-wise that is. Thea's show was fantastic - the highlight for me being 'blue christmas', as the vocal was just stunning. The whole show was really great though. And Alan had a spare guest list place, so Alice got in for free at the last minute too. Was really nice to have so many people - James, Alice, Riccardo, Kerena and Alan all there for (probably) the last pre-baby gig. Though Amy Wadge is playing the Half Moon in Putney on the 9th, if there is no news by then...

Watched 'Sweeney Todd' with Alice yesterday. It was pretty good, given that it was essentially one long murder-fest with singing. But Johnny Depp can really do no wrong.

Turns out Salon picked up on my research as well as Jezebel after the Guardian piece came out. All good news for me. Alice has been helping (read: entirely doing) with my new website, where all my professional/academic stuff will live. www.deborahfinding.com Hurrah!

Now going to have a shower and probably head off to Oxford for Zoe and William's tea party for Nahum. I'm hoping an inconvenient distance from the hospital will prompt labour to start...

A tale of two Christmas albums

Well, not a tale exactly - more an observation that Thea Gilmore's 'Strange Communion' kicks Tori Amos' 'Midwinter Graces' out of the room, house, street and town. The difference between them is really quite something. As such, tonight's Tori Amos show at the Jazz Cafe, showcasing the album, will be the first time in about 6 years that she's done a London show that I have not attended. But tomorrow night, my last pre-baby gig will be Thea Gilmore's show at Bush Hall, and I cannot wait. I know there are a few surprises in store, and I'm sure it will be fabulous.

No news here on the baby front. I had a massage today which was very nice, but made me wish I had had one much earlier. Dear God, how everything hurts. Movies this week a little thin on the ground so far:

Harry Brown (really very good indeed. Bleak though- like 'Gran Torino' with no funny)

No Reservations

So, Harry Brown is possibly my last cinema trip pre-baby, depending on when she arrives. Thea will be my last gig, unless I'm still sans-baby on 9th Dec, in which case I might make it over the the Half Moon in Putney to see Amy Wadge. Last art exhibition was Pop Life at the Tate Modern (lots of Andy Warhol and Tracey Emin, but actually the coolest thing to see was Damien Hirst's 'Golden Calf' which was strangely sad and affecting).

Three out of six NCT-ers have now had their babies (two queue-jumpers...I was supposed to be second!). Everyone's been early so far. Apart from me. Baby now officially 'late', but this is clearly ridiculous, given that 'term' is anything from 37 to 42 weeks of pregnancy. Yet when you go to make your 41 week appointment, the receptionist says 'oh dear' and looks at you pityingly... clearly there is only one 24 hour period in which it is acceptable to have the baby. Having said that, if this baby was 100% my DNA, she would have arrived on time, as I'm a bit of a stickler for time-keeping. Sadly those MacKenzie genes probably mean she'll start off a bit late, get half way out, then realise she's forgotten something and have to go back :)